10/25/08

Columbus Dispatch

Terry Ryan

Nowhere is the politicization of school accountability more obvious than in the Buckeye State.

Exhibit No. 1 is the Ohio attorney general’s legal actions against troubled charter schools, seeking their closure for allegedly violating the state’s charitable trust laws. At the behest of the Ohio Education Association, former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann spent untold energy and scarce public resources going after three underperforming charter schools in southwestern Ohio. One of the cases was shot down in a Montgomery County court last month, when the judge ruled the attorney general has no statutory or common-law charitable trust oversight over public charter schools.

Despite this defeat and the obviously partisan nature of the legal action, current Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers is considering an appeal, while the Democratic candidate for attorney general, Richard Cordray, insists the “suits have merit” and he would appeal the case.

Meanwhile, 99 public schools (nine of them charters) serving about 66,500 children have failed to make adequate yearly progress, or AYP, for six or more consecutive years and, therefore, according to federal law, should be undergoing serious restructuring. An additional 90 schools, 22 of them charters, serving another 58,000 students have failed to make AYP for five years and should be drafting restructuring plans this year.

Under the No Child Left Behind law, schools that fail to meet AYP targets for five years must develop a plan to restructure the school. If a school fails to make the grade by the sixth year, it must implement a re-structuring plan. There are several options for restructuring:

• Reopen the school as a charter school.

• Replace all or most of the school staff who are relevant to the school’s inability to improve.

• Outsource the operation of the school to private management.
• Turn the operation of the school over to the state.
• Implement any other major restructuring of the school’s governance arrangement.

Guidance from the U.S. Department of Education allows for variety in the rigor of restructuring based on the severity of a school’s failure. For example, a school that is largely performing well but failing to meet the needs of its English-language learners might simply need an overhaul of its English program, not the entire school. On the other hand, a school that is failing across many subgroups and whose overall academic results are routinely dismal likely needs a broader reform.

These persistently struggling schools, which make up about 5 percent of Ohio’s public schools, represent a responsibility for state and local leaders to take action to improve education for children. That’s happening in some places. For example, Taft Elementary School in Cincinnati failed to meet academic goals for nine consecutive years, so the district announced in January that the entire staff would be replaced and the school would reopen this fall as a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) neighborhood school, guided by faculty from the University of Cincinnati.

Despite efforts at schools like Taft, the No Child law largely has been ignored by the Ohio Department of Education, school districts and charter-school sponsors. Few deeply troubled schools have undergone the redesign required by law, and no one in the attorney general’s office, the governor’s office, the General Assembly or the state Education Department seems all that concerned. Thus, in Orwellian fashion, the state’s top prosecutor goes after three small charter schools using bizarre legal theory, while all those responsible for enforcing federal and state education law largely ignore legal requirements for restructuring failing schools.

In Ohio, politics trumps law and the net result is that thousands of children languish year after year in schools that show little ability to fix themselves.

Terry Ryan is vice president for Ohio programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.